It Happened One Night
by WhatBecomesOfYou
Summary: It was impossible to be just friends with Will, but their timing was horrible - until one snowy night when everything begins to change, that is. Will/Emma. Now complete!
1. Night

**Author's Note**: _I started writing this before Special Education aired, so any spoilers only go through Furt._

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* * *

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There was some sort of jinx on her having a relationship - one beyond their loaded conversations and interactions, that is - with Will Schuester. There was no other explanation. Their timing was impeccably _terrible_. Nothing ever worked out between them, but once they tried to settle back into what they had - a comfortable friendship, where they could talk to each other about personal things, not just Sue's latest antics - the familiar sinking in her stomach would settle in, and her thoughts would wander, and then she would have to find a quick diversion.

It was_ impossible_ to be "just friends" with him, no matter how much she would like to think she could do exactly that.

* * *

She drew her coat around her one afternoon as she walked out of the school one afternoon shortly after school came back into session. The forecast called for six to eight inches of snow, expected for some time that evening; she wanted to get home, put her feet up with a warm mug of hot cocoa and read one of the books she had purchased the weekend before while watching the snow drift down outside her window. With any luck, she could have a quiet evening to herself.

"Emma!" a voice called out from somewhere behind her. She turned to face the source of the voice, only to see Will jogging down the hallway toward her. In a flash, she remembered the last time he ran down a McKinley hallway to meet with her, over a year before. So much had happened since then, it was almost as though it had happened in a different lifetime, to a different person; she'd never forget it, though. It was one of those things she'd never forget, like her college graduation or the day of the dairy farm incident: it changed her life, albeit, not in the way she would have anticipated or liked for it to.

"Yes, Will?"

He stopped short of her, facing her, with a wide grin plastered on his face. "I wanted to ask you for a favor."

"Depends what it is."

"I got two books of classic sheet music in the mail yesterday and I was wondering if you'd help me pick songs for the kids to do at our next assembly."

"How classic are you talking?"

"The music of the '70s! Barry Manilow, Cat Stevens, Elton John -"

"As much as I like 'Hard Headed Woman' and 'Your Song,' Will, that's _not _what you've told me they like to sing," Emma interjected. "They're more comfortable with things from their own lifetimes."

"If we have _another_ disaster on the scale of Toxic, Figgins won't let us perform anymore."

Emma let out an exasperated sigh. "I'll help, but you have to agree to throw out any sheet music involving the words 'Mandy' or 'copacabana.'"

"Deal. My place at seven?"

"It's a deal."

* * *

If nothing else, Emma was known for her punctuality, she thought as she stood at his door and pressed the doorbell just as the hour hand on her watch ticked over to the new hour. Seven on the nose.

Will opened the door and grinned. "You're right on time," he said, ushering her in. She could hear a faint voice coming from his stereo, and smelled something cooking. "Hope you're hungry," he continued, "I'm making spaghetti, and I think there's enough for two."

"Will, we need to talk."

"Sure." He sat down on the couch, and motioned for her to sit next to him. She chose to sit on a kitchen chair instead. "What's going on?"

"This feels like a date."

"It's not."

"Then why is there music playing on the stereo and you're cooking us dinner and it's a snowy night and this is too soon, Will, I can't."

"Too soon?"

She folded her hands in her lap. "Carl and I broke up a couple of weeks ago, right after the holidays. I can't - I just - you know what I mean, don't you?"

"You and Carl -" his voice sounded almost ~excited for a moment before evening out. "Oh. _Oh_. What happened?"

"It wasn't working anymore," she said, "and it was mutual. But this - it feels like a date, Will, and I don't want to think about dating."

"It was _never_ a date."

"Then your spaghetti smells fantastic. Let's eat."

* * *

The six-to-eight inches of snow started coming down as they sat on his couch together a short time later, paging through sheet music. "Don't you think we should sing 'Ohio' for Regionals?" Will asked, putting a blue post-it - for possibility - on it. "It'd be _perfect_. State pride and all."

"Only if you want to remind everyone of Kent State," Emma said, swapping the blue post-it for a green one - for "_no way_." "'Four dead in Ohio'?"

"_That's_ what that song was about?"

"Yeah. It is."

"I never knew that."

As the night wore on, the green post-it pile grew higher and higher, while the blue post-it pile remained empty. Emma glanced out the window. "If I'm going to leave, I should do it now, before the snow gets worse." She gathered up her coat and put on her gloves and scarf. "It's been fun."

"Be safe out there."

"I will."

* * *

There was no way she could make it home. She'd figured that much out after fifteen or twenty minutes of cautiously creeping down Will's street, attempting to make it to the nearby intersection, but instead measuring her progress in inches. Parking her car along the side of the road, she decided to make a run for it back to his place. She could come back to get her car in the morning.

The snow blinded her, and she silently cursed the meteorologist as she ran, snowflakes peppering her. There was _no way_ this was _only_ six or eight inches.

When she reached his door, she slid her gloved hand down the doorbell and caught her breath. "Emma?" Will asked, opening the door. "Is everything okay?"

"I couldn't make it to the stoplight," she said, hesitating for a moment before continuing, "can I stay tonight? Just on your couch."

"Sure. Absolutely. Sure," he said, "Come in."

* * *

Will handed her two warm blankets and an extra pillow. "Is there anything else you need?" he asked.

Emma thought for a moment. "Do you have a t-shirt I could borrow?"

"Give me a minute." He ran into his bedroom, and in less than two minutes, he had an array of five or six t-shirts for her to choose from. "Any of these work for you?"

"I'll take that one." She took it from his hands and carefully examined it. "Bicycle Indiana 2005?"

"There was a time when Terri loved to bicycle and would sign us up for these day-long bicycle rides to give us something to do together," he said, almost as though he was drifting back in time to that time. "She was in love with the road and I was in love with her."

"What changed?"

"She - she took a turn too sharp and collided with a rock."

"Was she okay?"

"Yeah. She broke her arm in the fall though. When the cast came off, she decided that she would stick to indoor endeavors from now on. Crocheting, shopping, lying about pregnancies, that kind of thing," he said, a faraway look in his eyes. Snapping back to the conversation, he continued, "so, do you need anything else?"

"Nah. This will more than do, thanks, Will. Good night," she said, hugging him and giving him a slight peck on the cheek, before walking into the bathroom to change out of her wet and snowy clothing before going to bed.

"'Night, Emma."

-_to be continued_-


	2. Morning

**Author's Note:** _I just recently re-found the file for this story, with most of what needed to be written actually already written from when the first half of this was published so long ago, and so I wrote what little needed to be added (mostly at the end). Better late than never._

* * *

The next morning, she woke up with a knot in her back, and a chill along the bottom of her legs. The feel of the blankets was unfamiliar - comforting, but unfamiliar - and she couldn't place where she was at first.

She slowly opened her eyes, only to find herself curled up on Will's couch. It was his flannel blankets that covered her, his couch that had served as a mattress, his roof that protected her from the snow. She found herself smiling. Gathering up a blanket to cover her, she walked over to the window to look outside. Everything was covered in white, from the lamppost to the cars parked along the side of the road; she knew that if she could see it, her car would look just like these.

"They've canceled school for today already," someone said from behind her, his voice soothingly familiar in the morning light, "and the roads are _terrible_."

"Oh."

"Your clothes are dry, by the way; I put them in the dryer before I went to bed."

She let out a gasp, and then grinned at his thoughtfulness. "You've done so much for me already. Let me make breakfast. Do you have any oatmeal?"

"In the cupboard, yeah."

* * *

It was almost a scene out of any one of a thousand of her fantasies. Wearing Will's clothing, cooking breakfast for him after spending the night, no place to go as long as the snow continued to fall - the radio meteorologist was now saying it would be at least a foot, if not more - it was very nearly perfect.

She ladled the oatmeal into two matching bowls, spooned little lumps of cinnamon on top, and waited patiently for the toaster to pop out the slices of toast that would accompany their meal; two mugs of hot cocoa sat on the counter, topped with marshmallows.

"Do you have any jelly?" she called out.

"Behind the orange juice."

* * *

Their conversations over breakfast covered almost any topic they could think of - current events, the weather, whether or not Sue was raging about a missed day of terror, even a little about the upcoming assembly and the possible set lists they could use - but pointedly avoided any discussion of Carl, Terri or themselves. With a final scrape against his bowl, Will set the spoon down. "That was excellent, Emma."

"It was my mother's recipe."

"Then compliments to Mrs. Pillsbury."

"I'll have to pass along your compliment next time I talk to her. She takes pride in her breakfast recipes being more than up to par."

They fell into silence for a minute or two before Will cleared his throat and Emma began picking up the breakfast dishes to load them into the dishwasher. "Want to work on the set list more?" Will asked.

"Let me change out of this," Emma said, gesturing to the t-shirt, "but then, yes."

* * *

"But if I give them control over the set list again - and I didn't even _want_ to do Britney, if you remember, I had that lesson plan about Christopher Cross written up and everything - then we'll be doing the New Directions tribute to Ke$ha or Christina Aguilera or whoever, and Figgins will revoke our ability to perform at school-related events again."

"Shouldn't they be able to choose their own songs, though, to be able to connect to the music?"

"The classic songs were written for the teenagers of the time! Teenagers _can_ connect to these songs! You don't stop being able to connect to the meaning of The Beatles just because they're old enough to be your grandparents."

"Just because I owned a Debbie Gibson cassette or two when I was younger and would sing 'Only in My Dreams' into the broom handle while doing chores doesn't mean that Quinn or Rachel would be able to do the same - or even _want_ to, really."

"I wasn't expecting Quinn or Rachel to sweep the choir room."

"That's not what I was saying and you know it."

"Yeah." He paused. "You're right, but I love the classics and I feel like I need them to remember that music didn't start with the nineties. We didn't just wake up one day and have the Spice Girls, we had to have Blondie and the Supremes first."

"They know that it didn't, Will." She smiled at him. "But I think that you need to realize that your approach to music and theirs are two fundamentally different things. And neither is a bad thing, just - let them find their own Debbie Gibson."

"Maybe you're right." His face became somewhat downcast. "Maybe the generation gap is just too much."

"Maybe you should ask the kids for music they'd like to hear and do. I'm sure they can give you good recommendations on where to start." She smiled brightly at him.

"What about you?"

"Me? Unless you want recommendations on which classical pieces are overplayed, or which jazz musicians are underappreciated by the general American public, you're going to get better suggestions from them. If Christopher Cross is too old for them, I think Gregorian chants are right out."

"You're right." He brushed aside the papers and smiled at Emma. "So, how did you sleep last night?"

"Your couch is more comfortable than it looks," she said, massaging her back surreptitiously with one hand, "and it was kinda nice to wake up and see you first thing in the morning."

"Yeah, it really was," he said. "I could get used to it. Very easily."

"I could too, maybe, yeah," she said. "Yeah." His face came closer to hers, and he gently kissed her, brushing her hair back over one ear; his smile was infectious, and she couldn't help but smile back when she saw him smiling as they broke apart from the kiss. "Yeah, _definitely_." She wanted to do it again; she wanted to feel him kissing her, as the snowflakes continued to fall all around them. She wanted to feel warm and secure in his arms, in his embrace. "Somehow, I thought this would remain only in my dreams."

"Mine too," he said, almost as if he was remembering some distant dream, "mine too."

"Not anymore."

As they sat by the window and watched the snow fall in clumps and flakes, mugs of hot cocoa clasped in their hands, they curled up into each other and smiled. It had taken one night for the frozen tundra to thaw, and now they could have many more days like this - as many as they wanted.

-_fini_-


End file.
